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The Purple Guide to Learning Screenwriting in 10 Days
A day-by-day starter plan to write your first real screenplay pages by day ten
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: First Day
Welcome. If you're reading this, you've probably wondered at some point whether you could write a movie or a TV show. Maybe you've watched a scene and thought, "I know what that character should say," or you have a half-formed idea for a story that won't leave you alone. This chapter is about what day one actually looks like, before you buy any fancy software, before you read a single book on structure, before you tell anyone you're "working on a script."
Here's the deal: your first session is not about writing something good. It's about writing something and getting comfortable with the feeling of putting words on a page that are meant to be spoken out loud and performed. You will not produce a masterpiece today. You might produce a paragraph that makes you cringe. That is not only allowed, it's expected. The goal today is to break the ice, to touch the craft, and to find out what the act of writing a screenplay even feels like.
So, what does a first session actually look like? Set aside thirty minutes. Not two hours, not a whole afternoon. Thirty minutes. You're going to write a short scene. It won't be a full story. It will be a conversation between two people about something specific. That's it. That's your entire job today.
The Setup
Open a blank document on your computer, or grab a notepad if you prefer writing by hand. Don't worry about formatting yet.